Good afternoon, this is the conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the presentation of Moltiply Group Fourth Quarter 2024 Results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Marco Pescarmona, Chairman, Mr. Alessandro Fracassi, CEO, and Mr. Francesco Masciandaro, CFO of Moltiply Group. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome everybody to our conference call. We rely, as usual, on the presentation that was published on our website and start from page 17 of the document with the full year highlights. For full year 2024, our revenues are EUR 454 million, which is up 13.1% year -on -year compared to EUR 401.3 million in the previous year. This comes for 49% from our Mavriq or Broking division and 51% from our Moltiply or BPO division. EBITDA in the full year is EUR 122.8 million, and that's up 13.6% year -on -year compared to EUR 108.1 million in 2023. This comes for 64% from Broking and 46% from BPO. EBIT is EUR 73.4 million. That's up 16.3% year -on -year compared to the EUR 63.1 million of 2023. Of course, as you know, EBIT is affected by significant amortization of PPA assets. Net income for 2024 is EUR 43.9 million.
That's up 42.1% year -on -year compared to EUR 35.3 million in 2023. If we look on the following page of the fourth quarter, revenues are under—let me say something that I just missed. One important point is this asterisk here. Basically, let's go back to the previous slide to the full year. We have just signed a contract just very recently to sell a small subsidiary of our BPO division, a company called Centro Finanziamenti S.p.A., that is authorized to operate as a lender, and that was not giving us a particularly useful contribution and was causing a lot of complexity. We decided to discontinue this business by selling it. We are reporting our full- year figures net of discontinued operations.
This is how big, basically, the contribution of Centro Finanziamenti was in terms of net income contribution, negative EUR 0.9 million, and was small also in terms of revenues and so on. The figures here, and every time you see the asterisk, are net of Centro Finanziamenti. Again, it's small, but it's met in the figures. In the full- year report, you will have all the details, but again, it's minor. For 2023 also, we adjusted figures, but for 2023 the adjustment is almost neutral in terms of net income. Sorry for this. Going back to the Q4, in Q4, revenues are EUR 132.5 million. That's up 18.1% year -on -year compared to EUR 112.2 million in Q4 of 2023. The revenues come for 48% from Broking and 52% from BPO. In terms of EBITDA in Q4 of 2024, we reported EUR 38.2 million.
That's up 23.2% year -on -year compared to EUR 31 million in Q4 of 2023. I mean, the EBIT is not particularly relevant here. It's EUR 24.6 million. It's up a lot year -on -year, but this is just because in Q4 of 2023, we recognized all the amortization of the year of the newly acquired assets, basically the results of the purchase price allocation in 2023 of Rastreator and the other foreign companies. It is not a very meaningful comparison. Looking at the net income also, it's EUR 13.4 million in Q4 of 2024, but the comparison to Q4 of 2023 is not very meaningful because Q4 of 2023 was also affected by this PPA amortization effect that was all concentrated in Q4 in 2023. On page 19, we can go into the details of our Mavriq or Broking division.
Here, the division for the full year posted revenues of EUR 221.1 million. That is up 17.5% year -on -year compared to EUR 188.1 million in the previous financial year. The EBITDA is in the full year EUR 66.8 million. That is up 10.1% compared to EUR 60.7 million in 2023. The EBIT is EUR 43.7 million. That is up 7.5% year -on -year compared to EUR 40.7 million of 2023. Looking just at the fourth quarter, the fourth quarter had an acceleration with revenues of EUR 64.1 million, up 23.8% year -on -year compared to the EUR 51.8 million of Q4 2023. The EBITDA in the fourth quarter is EUR 20.5 million. That is up 15.5% year -on -year compared to the EUR 17.8 million of Q4 2023. EBIT, again, for the same thing that I described before, is EUR 13.6 million, but cannot be really compared to Q4 of 2023.
If you remember, once every year, we also provide figures about the breakdown of our revenues between the different business lines that compose the two divisions. Here, we are able to comment not only on the performance and outlook, but also to give these annual figures. Let's start from the summary, which is that our view of the performance of the Mavriq division in 2024 is positive. We did fine thanks to both organic growth and the contribution of the acquisition of Switcho, which was consolidated from Q3 2024, and Pricewise, that was consolidated for Q4 2024. Not everything was perfect, but we will comment on that below. The expectations for 2025 are for growth for all the main business lines, with the exception of e-commerce comparison, which has a more uncertain outlook, and we will also comment on that in a second.
Looking at the different business lines, we start with Credit Broking. Credit Broking was the business line that was actually flattish or slightly down year -on -year. Basically, we were expecting a recovery of this, which is mostly mortgages and some personal loans. We were expecting a recovery in 2024, but the recovery was quite delayed and started happening only in the final part of 2024. Now we are seeing the market, of course, up year -on -year, and the situation looks much better than in the first part of 2024. On this, the outlook is, at least for the short-term visibility, an outlook of growth. We see demand up year -on -year and good volumes. We would expect the continuation of the trends of Q4 2024.
Of course, all this is subject—this is the business that we have that is more subject to consumer confidence and so on. There is global instability. Of course, this could be affected, but for now, as I was saying, the outlook is positive and the continuation of what we have seen at the end of last year. Insurance Broking, this is a business in which we have seen , over the years, very stable trends. We continue to see double-digit organic growth in 2024. Actually, we did EUR 40 million of revenues, up 17.8% year -on -year compared to EUR 33.9 million in 2023. Double-digit organic growth, and also thanks, of course, to rising insurance premiums. Here, what we can say is that we expect growth to continue in 2025. Telco and energy comparison basically generated EUR 28 million of revenues in 2024.
That's up a lot year -on -year, almost 70% compared to EUR 16.5 million of an already good 2023. Here, the growth comes in part. It is organic. Partly, it is attributable to the acquisition of Switcho, which was a good addition to our business portfolio and has a synergy with the rest. For 2025, we expect growth to continue, even if mainly resulting from the enlargement of the consolidation area. On the next page, we have e-commerce-like comparison. Here, we have EUR 42 million of revenues in 2024. That's up 15.7% year -on -year compared to the EUR 36.3 million of revenues of 2023. The real situation is less satisfactory because we also had a very significant increase of traffic acquisition costs from Google, so that the EBITDA contribution in euros of this business line to the division and to the group is lower than last year.
In terms of EBITDA, we did negative year- on- year. We will contrast it. This is our performance in 2024 compared to 2023 in particular. It was affected in a significant way by some changes that Google introduced following the entry into force of the Digital Markets Act. Basically, with those changes, we were able to drive more traffic to our website, but at a very high cost. Overall, the net effect was unfavorable for our business. Here, we are in a, as you know, in a very particular situation because the European Commission has opened very quickly after the entry into force of the DMA an investigation against Google for possible violations of the DMA with respect exactly to the favoring of Google shopping vis-à-vis competing comparison services.
We hope that the Commission will quickly conclude its investigations and basically do what it is, use the instruments at its disposal to ensure full compliance with the regulation. On our side, that has our point of view, just the point of view of all the other main comparison websites in Europe. Our point of view is that the current solution is not compliant, so we would expect some action from the Commission. Of course, our results here would be linked and dependent also on the actual enforcement of the DMA, which hopefully is a one-year kind of soft deadline for the Commission. We should start seeing things hopefully soon. For now, there is no certainty. Finally, international markets, which includes Spain, France, Mexico, and now the Netherlands from Q4 of 2024, did EUR 64.3 million of revenues in 2024.
That's up 21.4% year -on -year compared to EUR 53 million in 2023. The comment is that things are going well organically. They did well organically, but also, of course, Pricewise contributed. We continue to fine-tune the acquired businesses in order to increase both their growth potential and also their profit potential. The expectation for 2025 is of continued organic growth. This is mainly driven by the insurance comparison businesses in the different countries. This is, of course, supplemented by the fact that Pricewise, we are enlarging the consolidation area. With this, I'm done on the Mavriq division, and I would like to hand it over to Alessandro for BPO.
Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Good morning. This is Joaquin Uzarri from the United States. We are on page 25.
Let's start looking at the numbers, and then we will get into some comments both of the division overall and the single business line, but then what's behind the performance of the year, and also the outlook for 2025. As you can see, first of all, also here, the note, it's important to recall the note that Marco said before. The numbers both in terms of revenues, EBITDA, and EBIT are net of discontinued operations, that is, the sale of our 10% of the lending entity asset that we agreed to sell early March of this year, 2025. All the state, you should always remind you of them looking at the numbers. Revenues are up 9.2% in 2024 from EUR 230 million to EUR 233 million, basically. The EBITDA is up 18.1% year -on -year from EUR 47.4 million in 2023 to EUR 56 million in 2024.
That also means that there has been an EBITDA margin improvement from 22.2% to 24% for the whole year in 2024. Also, the EBIT increased 32.2%. Again, looking at the EBIT with the PPA is always difficult, especially if none is separately meaningful in terms of trend. Anyway, it went up 32.2% from EUR 22.5 million in 2023 to EUR 29.7 million in 2024. There was obviously an improvement in the consequent EBIT margin. Let's look at the fourth quarter numbers, the financials. Here, you see this was a really positive quarter, even better than we expected. I'll comment about it in a second. We have a 13.2% growth in terms of revenues from EUR 60.5 million to EUR 68.4 million in the fourth quarter. The EBITDA also increased 33.4%, growing from EUR 13.3 million to EUR 17.7 million.
This has meant that we have increased our EBITDA margin from 22% to basically 26%. The EBITDA also shows a very positive trend from 7 to 11 million. That's a 58.2% year-on-year growth. The EBITDA margin increased from 11.5% to 16.1%. These numbers do not include the negative impact that we have had in 2024 of discontinued operations. Let's comment on this. The first thing, let's say we're very proud of these results because all of this is organic, apart from a very small contribution in December of a small acquisition that we did. You can consider this completely organic. It means that the business is really resilient and able to deliver growth. If you follow the perspective for this year, it has actually improved along the year we excelled positively. The credit market was really slow.
Marco has already commented on it. At the simple point, we thought we would not be able to grow in 2024. Instead, we were able, also thanks to the recovery of the credit market, but also thanks to a good performance of Moltiply Trades, Moltiply Wealth. We really had a very, very positive second half of the year and also of the first quarter, as I just commented. Again, the real news is the Moltiply Mortgages, which, as you will see in a second, delivered good growth overall on considering the full year. Really, this growth was in the second half and especially in the last quarter.
This is thanks to not only the mortgage market as a whole, but also the fact that, again, with decreasing interest rates, we saw a resurgence in refinancing in the food, which, as you know, is an important part of our outsourcing business with the para-notary services that we offer to banks. If we look at 2025, we really see that these growth trends can continue. Overall, if you look at the overall division, and obviously, we will have different trends at the single business line level. I will comment in the next pages on the different prospects of the various business lines. Overall, we do expect to continue this revenue growth and EBITDA growth. There are obviously margins for uncertainty. I will not even comment on the global political unrest and all these things, which obviously will impact potentially consumer confidence.
That means that all the retail credit-based businesses would be impacted. Let me just comment because some investors have also asked for it on the M&A transactions that are currently underway in the Italian market. My comment assumes that there are no impacts during 2025. That is really reasonable considering the big uncertainty in terms of outcome of this quarter's risico that we are seeing. We really do not know what will be the impact in the end. Let me just comment, if not, we can hear that the values are the ones that would impact us the most potentially, which is the Mediobanca and MPS . Again, these are significant clients of the BPO division, both of them are significant clients of the BPO division. Obviously, we do not know what will be the potential restructuring that will happen afterwards.
Again, I think it's reasonable to assume that we will see no impact in 2025. Obviously, all of you have your views on what will really happen here. It seems to me reasonable to say that the outcomes of the single deals ,and even if there will be reconfigurations of the various deals, it's really hard to say and be forward. Let's get into the different business lines. I'm now on page 28. I'll give a brief description of what's underlying the results of 2024 and also an outlook of 2025, bearing in mind the uncertainties that I said before. 2024, mortgages was, in the end, a very good year. We saw almost 20% growth on the full year. Here, however, especially when we compare these results to the Mavriq side, this seems much stronger.
The reason why this is much stronger is, in part, for some of the single -client trends of the BPO division, which are not necessarily connected with markets. For example, here, we have Monte Paschi as a client, and it had a very strong growth in the mortgage market share. We were able to serve on that growth. It is also true that behind these numbers, there are the para-notary services. Those services, in terms of revenues, are when the business grows, the single ticket has incited, as also the income of the notaries. That income has recently increased because of the fair tariff deal, however you want to call it. I mean, the equal compensation, fair compensation law that has come into action in the last quarter that has increased. It is not just a market effect here. You also see a mixed effect.
There is a more significant growth in terms of revenue of the para-notary business, which will continue also in the next quarters. We are also seeing growth of the outsourcing of underwriting and commercial activities. We are also seeing new clients growing and new clients coming in the door. Here, the perspectives are positive. We really expect a good 2025 for this business line, which was kind of the laggard in 2023 and the best start of 2024. Also, franchise in 2022. This is where we are confident that we will see this will be an engine of Moltiply Group division growth for 2025. Let's go now to the real estate business. This one, as we said, really had the impact of the disappearing of the Ecob onus incentives. In reality, this business performed better than we expected.
We had expected a much steeper decline than this one. This is because, again, the tail, both in terms of revenues and margin of the activities relating to the incentivized restructurings, has continued into the second half of 2024. Now, it is really over. In December, it was already basically zero. I mean, there are some really small, small activities, but they are not significant, as the rest of the business has been in the last three years. Here, 2025 will really be net of these activities. Let's say it declined. We expected it. It declined less. We expected that by 2025, we will still see that downward adjustment. Again, with all the other activities that we do here, we also do appraisals for credit-related activities. As the credit business, the credit market recovers, we will see growth of those activities.
They will probably not be enough to affect the nullification of the impact of the Ecob onus. There is space for opportunities for stabilization. 2025 should still be declining, at least from where we stand now. Although, for example, we acquired a new client on the appraisal side. I mean, we will see both market and market share growth. The next business line is Moltiply Loans. Here, we saw reasonable growth, actually interesting growth in 2024. Unfortunately, this growth was more in revenues than margins. Overall operating margin and EBITDA level kind of remained unchanged between 2023 and 2024. We expect 2025 to see maybe a little more growth in operating margin and a decline in revenues, small declines in revenues, and a little bit of adjustments. We are really focusing on a future GTX. Overall, this has been a very stable business line through the years.
It delivers good margins. We are happy with it. Let's go to claims. Claims has obviously been the star performer of 2024. This is really thanks to the big events of 2023 and 2024 for the end of the tail. The end is also where most of the profits are because the claims that take longer to process are the larger ones, the more complex ones. Those are inherently of higher margin for us because the value that we bring to the table, helping companies deal with these claims, which are larger, can help them save money. They would recognize more important margins to us. Here, you saw a growth, yes, in revenues, but also especially in margin during 2024. As you see, almost 20% growth from 2023.
This is a business that has really exploded in the last two years. What do we expect in 2025? We expect, obviously, a normalization, which, again, at least from where we stand now, we're also gaining market shares. We do expect to have a 2025 that will be lower than 2024. We do expect to be over the 2023 levels. It is not just a hump of revenues and profitability, but we are on a multi-year trend of growth. We hope to continue to see this growth. A note here, in 15 days, we will finally see the obligation for companies and corporations to insure themselves for natural catastrophes. That means that there will be a new interesting engine for us. As you know, most of our activities are relative to property damages and things like this.
The fact that the insured days will increase will give us good opportunities for organic growth, both in terms of revenues and margins. Even if it will take some time, because basically the obligation comes into force April 1st. First, people will have to insure. Again, it's not very clear what happens if you do not comply with this obligation situation. The regulations, in general, will show you that. Anyway, there will be for sure a push in insuring more. That's in the end good news because, independently from the level of weather events and big weather events, obviously, if those events hit areas that are more insured than in the past, there will be more insurance claims and therefore more need for our work.
Lercari, which is the smallest of our business lines, is anyway continuing to grow, basically growth at the pace of the division in 2024. I have to say here, as we already announced, we have renewed the management of this business line. We think we've probably also reinforced the whole team. We think a new and interesting pipeline on the commercial side. We should be able to get new clients in the door and therefore unlock a little bit of growth also on this business line. It's also fair to say, as it's written here, that some of the growth is also due to the fact that the markets, the financial markets, performed well in 2024 relative to 2023. Some of our contracts are basically based on basis points of the assets under management by our clients.
Therefore, obviously, there is some growth which is just connected to how the market performed. As you said, it's been true since we had it in the last two years. Finally, Moltiply Lease, which is the sum of our advanced retail business that does outsourcing for lease and rental, and our Moltiply Tech, which is a software company that provides solutions and core solutions for the leasing market. Here, the good news is we are also launching a Rental Software Product Rental platform, really launching in these days, really getting our first clients in the door. The result was good. Do not be fooled by the just 0.61% because you might remember if you've been following us that 2023 was really a record year, also with a lot of one-offs.
Again, 2024, this business line was able to deliver continued growth even on exceptional levels that came before. 2025 is going to be a more complicated year because we have some headwinds. Those are the general headwinds of the automotive market. There will also be something specific to Italy and to the subsegment that we work with, which is obviously the subsegment of last week, because that is what the rental business is about and the leasing business is about. You might know that the fringe benefit tax treatment has changed in 2025. Basically, if you buy, if you get assigned as an employee a new car in 2025, and that car is a traditional car, I mean, it is not an electric vehicle or a plug-in vehicle, then your fringe benefits will be higher. That means you will pay higher taxes.
This is still only for new contracts, which means that there will probably be a hit on the new rental market. The new leasing market, people will probably postpone. If their contract expires in 2025, they might decide to postpone getting the new car. That obviously will kind of impact us in terms of the business that we do because our business is also in managing the new contracts both for rental and for lease. If there are a smaller number of contracts, then obviously we will be impacted. We are focusing anyway on keeping the growth at a margin level thanks to operational improvements and efficiency. Two last comments before I give it back to Marco to talk about the event policies and the financial position. Basically, as we have already commented, we have decided to divest from Centro Finanziamenti .
Let me just say this was a healthy thing to do. Unfortunately, non-banking financial institutions have a tough life in this market because funding is very volatile. Therefore, it is very complicated if you do not do this at scale to really run them as continuously profitable businesses. In 2023, it was a good year. 2022, 2023 was basically a break-even. 2024, as Marco commented, we basically lost at an EBITDA level EUR 1 million. We decided that the right thing to do was to divest from this business. We are disciplined enough to be able to do it by March of 2025. Finally, in November, we bought a small company which is specialized in providing services for consulting in the pension area.
As you know, we believe this will be an interesting segment because basically, the baby boomers are now really getting close to the moment they will retire. Retirement is complex in Italy, both in terms of the options that you have, understanding when you can really retire, and what is the best procedure, what is the best combination of laws to use to retire. People are really in need of this service. We hope to be able to foster the growth of this business both in terms of a B2C model, but especially on a B2B2C model, using our normal clients, banks, and insurance companies as the platform to see this growth in the future. That will also add to the growth in 2025. With this, I am done talking about the BPO part.
I will give it back to Marco for the remaining part of the presentation. Thanks, Marco.
Thank you, Alessandro. Very quickly on the dividends, the proposal of the board is to keep the same level of dividend as last year. That is EUR 0.12 per share. That is a quick comment. More interesting is the net financial position. Here you see that our net financial position is negative EUR 320 million as of December 31st, 2024. Basically, this is the combination of many effects. On one side, we had strong cash generation, both from the, I mean, you can see this from the cash flow statement, from the operating profitability of the business, but also we improved the working capital, especially keeping in mind that we increased the size of the business.
The working capital did not change in a significant way despite this enlargement of the business. We used these resources, both for the acquisitions during the year, both the amounts that we paid and the liabilities that we recognized for the puts and calls on the minorities of the acquisitions of 2024. The most important negative effect, or an equally important negative effect, was the fact that over the year, we had to redetermine the liabilities of existing options. In particular, the biggest impact, I mean, the really relevant impact was the one on Lercari. We will provide the figures, as usual, in the full -year report. Lercari, you know, is the company that does claims that manages the Moltiply Claims. We have to acquire, during the course of 2025, a large minority of 49%.
As usual, we have these puts and calls that are linked to results. The company did very, very well in terms of revenues, as Alessandro explained, and even better in terms of EBITDA, which is the parameter that is used for our calculations. So much better than the budget. We have a bigger business, but also we have to pay out more money. This is now, based on the results achieved in 2024, included in the puts and calls liabilities and therefore in the net financial position. Actually, this is within the current financial liabilities line of the net financial position. For the details, it is better to wait until you see the full report. This is what affected our results. That is how we get to the 320.
As you know, our covenants with the banks also treat the Money stake as cash equivalent. For the covenants, the net financial position is negative EUR 218 million. I would say this is the comment on the net financial position. Even on financial aspects, we are quite confident that with a good operative performance in expected increased size, the financial position will improve significantly during the year. With this, we are done with the presentation. We can open the floor to questions. Please, operators, go ahead. Excuse me, are you ready for questions? Yes, we are.
Thank you. This is the conference call operator. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone.
If you change your mind and wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star, and one at this time. The first question is from Aleksandra Arsova, Equita. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Three on my end. The first one is on mortgages. Just maybe a little bit of color on the fourth quarter alone. You said definitely a recovery. I estimate actually a double-digit year-on-year growth. If you can confirm this, and maybe if you can compare it to the general market trend in the mortgages in the fourth quarter, and how much of this growth is refinancing and how much is new mortgages. The second one is maybe a follow-up on e-commerce.
If I remember correctly, over the third quarter, we saw both a recovery in revenues and operating margins there. We are seeing, again, let's say, a slowdown in EBITDA and operating margins in the fourth quarter and maybe also in 2025. You mentioned previously the acquisition cost of Google advertising. Maybe what changed between the third and the fourth quarter in the Google behavior. Just a little bit of color on this. The third one is actually on some newspaper articles that were published over the weekend, again, on some rumors that you are potentially closing a deal with a proceeding in Germany on Verivox. Maybe if you can provide any color or comment on this.
And then generally, what is your approach around 2025 on M&A, and what kind of targets you are looking at , and maybe how you will treat your MoneySuperMarket stake if you are still willing to keep it, or maybe to sell it if an interesting opportunity emerges. Thank you.
Okay. Let's see if I can remember everything. Let's start from mortgages. I would say, yes, double-digit is what we saw. I would say we are performing, I think, in both divisions in line or better than the market than thanks to, I would say, market share increases and so on. I would normally look at what the market is doing and expect us to perform in line or a bit better. So far, that's been double-digits. That applies both to purchase mortgages and to refinancings.
You see a bigger impact of refinancings on BPO, by the way, because, as Alessandro explained, basically, the cost of the notaries that go into our revenues have, I would say, maybe Alessandro correct me if I'm wrong, but more than doubled or doubled, something like that.
That has increased 75%, something like that.
Okay. 75%. Okay. A big portion of our pass-through, in effect, of our revenues within BPO has increased by 75%. That has amplified the impact. In general, I mean, both divisions should do in line or better than the market from what we can currently see. Now, e-commerce this is ups and downs. Our comment is on the full year. We had better quarters, worse quarters. Actually, the first half of the year, we had some of the worst periods. It really has ups and downs.
I would look at the full year and the full year wore down in terms of, and not commenting on the fourth quarter, and all in terms of EBITDA. For 2025, for now, we have, I would say we will take a conservative view because there is instability, things changing all the time. We have this big concern about non-compliance, which, of course, is also an opportunity. Finally, there is a long-awaited regulatory intervention. Finally, on the articles, I mean, you're talking about Verivox. This is a topic on which we are not able to make any comment. In general, our approach to M&A is, I would say, opportunistic. We would do acquisitions that are coherent with our strategy. That would mean acquisition of comparison and intermediation businesses also internationally, that have a good market position and that would fit our business portfolio.
Because we have been successful in running the acquired businesses so far and improving their performance, that would be part of our potential growth strategy. The other part would be more acquisitions in Italy for the BPO division of businesses in the same verticals where we are already present, or in verticals that have similarities with what we are already doing. This would be our strategy. We can fund acquisitions with bank financing. We have good relationships with a number of banks in Italy that would likely support us. Of course, if something is really sizable, then we would consider potentially selling part of our Money shares. This is a financial investment, as you know. Obviously, the company is not trading at a very rich price, and so before selling it, as you know, we would really need to have something that is very, very competitive.
I would say we have enough flexibility to do many things with our own resources and ordinary bank debt.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Gianmarco Bonacina at Banca Akros. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon. A few questions from my side. The first one, given your current visibility, you provided the clear liquidity outlook. Can we say that the current market expectations for 2025 are a good summary of your qualitative outlook? I mean, high single-digit revenue growth and low double-digit EBITDA growth can be considered as fair? That's my first question. Yeah. The second one is about the situation with DMA and Google.
Are you able to give us, let's say, an outcome in terms of quantitative impact for you in case there would be a positive ruling or a range, or just, let's say, what could happen in, let's say, in your P&L? The last one is, recently, we saw some increase in mortgage rates. To what level, even though clearly they're still significantly down year -over -year, which level do you see as a maximum under which you would then have, again, maybe some issues in terms of positive growth? Thank you.
Okay. In terms of the outlook, I would say the outlook that you mentioned is a possible outlook. I mean, it could be that, or it could be, it depends, because we are starting the year with strength in a number of business lines.
We do not know what will happen in the second half of the year. I think that is a meaningful outlook, maybe a bit conservative. It really depends. It is difficult to make any predictions. If we are able to continue at the current pace, maybe things could be better. If one just takes an average expectation, that makes sense. I would say stay tuned, and we will see how it evolves in the coming quarter. Regarding the DMA, the key thing to understand is that the online comparison market, which means the market where Google Shopping and Pricewise operate, is a very, very big market. This is very significant. If this market is reopened, then the size of Pricewise could increase very significantly.
This would require, for instance, if Google is prohibited, for instance, from showing Google Shopping in the search results page, that would be very beneficial. That would be, for instance, a possible outcome. It is not for us to say what the commission will decide. This is like a potential decision. If they decide that the current favoring cannot continue and until there is a different solution, there is a prohibition to show Google Shopping within the results pages. T his would be beneficial and certainly would restore fair treatment and certainly would result in significant growth of the [Mutuionline] revenues. Also, on this, I would say that side is quite significant. It takes time. We have to see exactly how the enforcement will take place. This is in a situation where there are a lot of tensions.
These discussions, what the commission does, can be instrumentalized in trade talks and so on. There is probably a lot of caution everywhere. We do not know what will happen. Potentially, this is a significant upside. Finally, the increasing mortgage rates. Maybe on this also, Alessandro can help me. I would say we can withstand an increase of, say, 1 percentage point in terms of long-term interest rates. It really depends on, generally, the consumer confidence, inflation, what is happening to real estate prices, and so on. I would not expect small changes in interest rates to have a big impact this year. If there is a slowdown in the mortgage market, I think it is more likely to come from consumer confidence rather than from interest rates.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Gabriele Venturi, Banca Akros. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. You already answered my question. I have nothing more to ask. Thank you.
The next question is from Tommaso Nieddu, Kepler Cheuvreux . Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I would have two on my side. The first one, I am trying to understand the margin contraction. I mean, it is certainly driven by the e-commerce price comparison and the slightly lower contribution from Credit Broking. Do we have any other headwinds there? How should we see margins next year? Yeah. On top of that, it would be also helpful to know if you can give us the organic growth of the year, or better, the contribution of the two new acquisitions, which one, Pricewise? Thank you.
Okay.
I would say, yes, that the contraction of the margins is attributable to Credit Broking and also to e-commerce price comparison, as you correctly pointed out. It is also potentially a mixed effect. I do not have the exact breakdown. You have some business lines that are growing faster than others. It seems like e-commerce price comparison is both seeing decreasing margins and adding a greater weight on the total. I would say, given the outlook that we have stated, basically, I think margins should be expected to be up year -on -year overall, rather than contracting, because now we are seeing Credit Broking doing better. The other things that are growing also, I would like you to see margin expansion.
Overall, I think, but you need to see quarter by quarter, I think that it's more likely to have an outlook of improving margins based on what we said so far. The acquisitions that we have made, I mean, let's say how the two companies are doing. Let's start from the easiest, which is Switcho, that was kind of, it's not a startup, but a fast-growing company. We are seeing with Switcho significant organic growth. We have seen it in 2024. Whereas Pricewise, it's a more stable business in a more stable market. We are improving a number of things. The contribution is, I mean, year -on -year, by the way, the previous year was a year of reopening of the market. There is some organic growth, but nothing sensational.
In terms of what they contribute to the consolidation, we do not disclose it. Again, one company is only for one quarter, the other for two quarters. The EBITDA contribution is not so high. You can probably estimate it based on last year's figures if that is what you are after. I do not know if I answered your question or you meant something slightly different.
No, no, no. It is perfect. Maybe if I can just follow up on that question. On the cash flow generation that was very strong in the quarter and the year, I was just wondering if you think you would have more room for improving the working capital, or you are just already at your best there?
I do not know if we are already at our best.
We did a conscious effort in the second half of the year to improve the working capital. That is especially on the receivable side, both in terms of the time it takes to collect invoices, but also the time it takes to issue invoices, which has to do also with the conciliation with our partners and so on. I would say we have probably done most of the work. Maybe there is a little bit of extra improvement that could be visible going forward. Most of the effort was probably already done.
Thank you.
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Yep. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.
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